KCOM

KCOM has been connecting Hull and East Yorkshire since 1904. They have achieved great things in this time; more recently this has included becoming the first in the UK to offer unmetered internet access and ADSL broadband, and the first to roll out ultrafast fibre broadband as standard to the city of Hull. In order to support their drive to deliver service excellence, KCOM wanted to ensure they had the right software in place that would not only help them effectively deliver this service, but also match their ambitions.

The Challenge

With over 1,500 employees responsible for the maintenance and installation of networks across the North East, all of KCOM’s processes must work fluidly if they are to live by their mission of delivering the very best customer service. In 2017, they recognised that, whilst their customer service was good, their existing, internally developed field service management software was holding them back. The legacy system in place had inefficiencies that were excessively drawing upon resources at all levels. KCOM therefore set about finding a solution that would meet their three key needs:

The Solution

In addition to meeting the criteria above, the service delivery software KCOM selected also needed to provide scalability and robustness. It was also vital that the solution would provide a simple transition because no matter how experienced a team is, any transition brings an element of apprehension, particularly when so much is reliant on a single system. For this reason, Oneserve’s Implementation and Support team put great emphasis on the implementation process, not only ensuring every factor was considered, but also ensuring someone was on hand to answer any questions when they arose. As a result, KCOM were up and running quickly with a successful transition. Field Control Manager, Chris Akrill, explains “The introduction of Oneserve was a cultural and technological change. We had about 20 years of data to transfer to a new system so this was a concern for us. But it was so simple and Oneserve has transformed the way we work.”

KCOM manage all of their processes within Oneserve, from scheduling a job, to recording job information, to performance management. Each process is simplified and joined up, providing efficiencies across the board. Chris gives an example of this, “We now schedule a job at the click of a button and no longer have any need for paperwork or spreadsheets. The business benefits of these effortless processes are vast.”

In addition to the simplicity Oneserve has brought, KCOM also find the Schedule Optimiser hugely beneficial. The intelligent Optimiser uses a powerful scheduling engine and advanced algorithms to find the most efficient order for each day of appointments. This both minimises drive time and reduces administration burden. Chris explains in more detail, “We run the optimiser over a 20 day window, which means it has 20 days to continually optimise jobs as they are booked in. This all happens automatically without us having to do anything and we are saving an average of 6 hours per day.”

“The support the Oneserve team provide is brilliant. Everyone is very approachable and accommodating and they always come back to us quickly. We have never had anything like this level of support before, so it makes a refreshing change. ”

Vikki Hansford, Customer Improvement Lead - KCOM

The Results

With 230 mobile licences and 480 desktop users, Oneserve drives the entire operational process at KCOM. In addition to the highlights above, Oneserve has provided a number of additional benefits.

Invaluable data

Relevant and valuable data is now at the fingertips of all those who need it, which means these individuals can use the data to make informed improvements to processes and plans. Customer Improvement Lead, Vikki Hansford, explains, “We get more out of Oneserve than any other system we’ve used. We have learned so much about our engineers’ workdays and more about our customers. Oneserve gives us visibility like never before, which means we can now effectively and confidently make improvements to our processes.”

Enhanced customer communication

KCOM were very keen to provide a more in-depth customer experience and as Vikki explains, “We can now communicate far more effectively with our customers because call operators can see previous calls and log them more effectively in Oneserve. We can track every channel of communication in one place, whether that is live chat, social media or phone calls. This enables us to provide the service excellence we were striving for.”

Completing more jobs the first time

Getting the right person to their assigned job on time, equipped with the necessary tools and in the most efficient way possible is a key priority for KCOM. It is also imperative if they are to continually deliver service excellence. With the entire service delivery planned through Oneserve, everyone has access to the information they need to do their job effectively. This increase in communication and collaboration meant KCOM quickly saw improvements in the service their frontline team provide, which were represented in a significant increase of their first-time fix rates.

Improved reporting

Using self-service reports and dashboards, KCOM now have more detailed insight across the business, including statistics for productivity, first-time fixes, travel time and job completion time. When it comes to generating reports on these, Chris talks about his experience, “Gathering the necessary information, doing the maths and creating reports has never been my favourite task, but Oneserve has completely removed the laborious process I previously experienced. Now I can tailor and generate a report within seconds. It saves me time and gives me a professional and accurate report ready to use straight away”.

Simple to use

Due to Oneserve’s intuitive interface, everyone can easily navigate and use the system – from the frontline team using the mobile application to the System Administrators amending the system to meet their evolving needs – everyone can quickly get to grips with the elements they need to do their job productively. Vikki says, ”New starters only need half a day of training carried out internally during their induction. This simplicity means they are out in the field delivering service excellence from the word go.”

Unprecedented visibility

Automatic scheduling is saving an average of six hours per day

Quick, comprehensive reporting

“Oneserve has transformed the way we manage our jobs. The transition was both a cultural and technological change, but it has been very straightforward. The simplicity of Oneserve makes it very easy to deliver our service and, because it is so thorough, we no longer have a need for any paperwork or spreadsheets.”